Do you have any insight from your experience why that is?

I mean, I just don't think they're capable of changing their model.

It's a very entrenched business.

I mean, I think what you're seeing is consolidation of big publishers.

But if you look at the big five, they're doing okay.

I mean, they have giant back lists.

They're not going away.

Available at all booksellers and in the links below.

They just are not going to work.

Well, you're right.

No, but it's an important tangent because I think sometimes people will love to use the term vanity, you know, as a cudgel of some sort.

And yet what you're talking about is exactly that.

Like there are absolutely instances and historically and now where people beautiful books have always been subsidized for any number of reasons, and sometimes because the author themselves is entrepreneurial.

So obviously, when you subsidize some portion of your own work, then you're going to get a higher royalty.

And what nobody is talking about is some of the predatory practices of traditional publishers, you know, who are retaining IP for no reason other than they just can, you know, who won't sell the... content back to the authors.

Those kind of questions are terrible, but...

So when was your first visit to Universal Orlando?

Well, I'll say allegedly, because I don't remember it, but allegedly my first visit was in 1994.

1993, 1994, somewhere around then, but I was very young.

I don't remember the first visit, but we went essentially every summer growing up, so I really have strong memories, I wanna say probably when Islands opened.

Um, but yeah, been going for a while now, I guess.

A- and, um, we will wrap up the podcast by discussing the glut of HHN35 house announcements we've had since the last new show.

First up, we have the second original house of the year, H.R.

Blood and Guts Presents a Halloween Frightacular.

Tell me a little bit about she writes and, you know, and how it's structured, how you founded it, how you filled that niche in the market.

Yeah, I mean, She Writes, in terms of its founding, you know, I was friends with the woman who founded SheWrites.com.

Her name is Kami Wyckoff.

At the time, it was sort of touted as like a Facebook for women writers.

It was a community, sort of a substacky vibe.

You know, people wrote long pieces and they shared and it was a community at that time.

Um, and I thought to myself, if I'm not going to stay in traditional publishing, it would be fun to start like a publishing entity, but I didn't think of it in big terms.

uh in terms of hybrid and then you have all these ones in between that i always feel like they're like semi-scams because they like to over promise or at least they like to they like to allow people to misunderstand what they offer on purpose so i'm just curious you're uh to hear your perspective on that and how you've seen that industry grow and